Health Insurance

Providing access to quality health care is another valuable component of employee compensation. Virtually all park and recreation agencies offer health insurance coverage to staff and their families. Most agencies (87 percent) provide benefits for both employees and their families, while 13 percent provide employee-only benefits. In addition, most agencies require employees to share health insurance costs, including having their staff contribute to insurance premiums. The percentage of the premiums that an agency pays and the percentage that an employee must cover may vary greatly between agencies. Typically, park and recreation agencies cover 85 percent of their employees’ health insurance premiums. Some agencies pick up an even greater part of the tab: 39 percent pay for at least 90 percent of their employees’ health insurance premiums, including 20 percent of agencies that cover the entire amount. At the other end of the spectrum, nearly 20 percent of agencies cover less than 70 percent of their employees’ health insurance premiums. Special park districts tend to pay a higher percentage of their employees’ health insurance premiums (a median of 90 percent) than do other agencies.

PERCENTAGE OF HEALTH INSURANCE PREMIUMS PAID BY PARK AND RECREATION AGENCIES

(Percentage Distribution of Agencies)

All

1-10 FT Employees

11-20 FT Employees 21-50 FT Employees 51-100 FT Employees More Than 100 FT Employees City/

Town/ Borough County

Special Park District/ Regional Authority Urban 100 percent 20% 21% 29% 11% 21% 11% 20% 17% 23% 13% 90-99 percent 19 16 17 32 10 26 16 21 29 38 80-89 percent 28 28 27 30 38 16 30 25 23 25 70-79 percent 14 13 13 11 14 21 13 21 10 * 50–69 percent 10 10 12 7 * 26 13 8 4 13 Less than 50 percent 9 12 * 11 14 * 8 8 10 *

Median agency contribution 85 80 85 85 81 80 80 83 90 85

* = less than 1%

In addition to health insurance and vacation, an overwhelming majority of agencies offers other valuable benefits as a part of their compensation packages for FT employees, including: • Dental (offered by 98 percent of agencies) • Continuing education (98 percent) • Life insurance (97 percent) • Vision (96 percent) • Employee assistance/Counseling (93 percent) In some cases, the agency pays the full cost of the benefit. In other cases, the agency and employee share the costs. Park and recreation agencies are more likely to bear the full cost for continuing education, life insurance and employee assistance.